


the best mistake (you’ll ever make)

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Season/Series 02, Ward x Simmons Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4433333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waking up on the wrong side of the country's always a trip, but at least the company is nice.</p><p>[For the <b>Flora & Fauna</b> theme at Ward x Simmons Summer.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	the best mistake (you’ll ever make)

**Author's Note:**

> All caught up on comments, go me! Getting my second fill in under the wire for wssummer week five, even better!
> 
> Title is from Natalia Kills' _Trouble_. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

“Ward? _Ward_. Wake up!”

Grant’s moving before consciousness even fully returns. It’s pure reflex, all instinct: he doesn’t know where he is or how he got here, and there’s someone touching him, so he acts. It’s not until after he does—until he’s got her pinned under him, one arm across her throat, other hand wrapped tight around her right wrist—that the voice accompanying the touch processes, and he realizes the _someone_ in question is Simmons.

“Fuck,” he swears, moving off of her at once. Any other time, he might be tempted to stay where he is—because Simmons is gorgeous and her body is soft and warm beneath his—but the half frightened, half wary look on her face is an instant turn-off. “Fuck, Simmons, I’m—”

“Don’t apologize,” she says, impatiently, as he helps her sit up. “It’s my fault; I should know better than to try waking a specialist so abruptly—I _do_ know better. I just wasn’t thinking.”

She touches her throat with the hand he was restraining three seconds ago, and he doesn’t need more than a decade of specialist work under his belt to know that her wrist and her neck are both going to bruise. Something unpleasant curls in his chest, hot and unfamiliar.

He pushes it aside. If Simmons isn’t thinking, something’s up; he doesn’t have time for emotion.

“Where are we?” he asks, doing a quick scan of their surroundings.

There’s no sign of immediate danger, which is good. _Less_ good is the fact that they’re in some kind of forest—actually, considering the last thing he remembers is being in a warehouse in Midtown Manhattan, he’d call it downright bad.

“I’m not sure,” Simmons says, a little helplessly. “Judging by the various flora and fauna I’ve spotted, we must be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. How we got here, however, I truly couldn’t say.”

He looks her over carefully. “Are you hurt? Aside from, uh…”

He gestures to her throat; her hand’s still pressed against it, and at the motion, she lets it fall away. The thing in his chest curls a little tighter at the sight of her reddened skin.

“No, I’m fine,” she says. “And you?”

He does a quick inventory of himself. He’s a little sore, and his head is throbbing, but aside from that, he’s fine. He’s also fully armed, which might be a good or a bad thing, depending.

“Fine,” he says. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

She frowns, a little, and looks around them. “Breakfast at the Playground. Which this certainly is _not_.”

“No,” he agrees, worry growing. “Did you hit your head?”

“I said I’m…” She trails off, eyes narrowing. “That’s not the last thing you remember?”

“No,” he says. There’s no point in just sitting here; he gets to his feet, then helps her to hers, taking the opportunity to give her a subtle once-over. She doesn’t _look_ injured (other than what he inflicted, that is), but… “We left the Playground yesterday.”

“We did?” she asks. A little bit of hope enters her eyes. “For the Pacific Northwest?”

Grant shakes his head. “Manhattan.”

“Oh, dear,” she says, worrying at her lower lip. After a second, her hand goes to her ear. “That at least explains why I’ve a comm, but it’s not working. Is yours?”

He checks, a little concerned that he didn’t notice he was wearing one until she mentioned it, and gets only static in return. A quick check of his pockets produces his cell phone, and—wonder of wonders—it works fine.

“Got your phone?” he asks her.

She pats her pockets, then shakes her head.

“Here,” he says, and hands his over. “Call Coulson, have them tag our location.”

“What are you going to do?” she asks, already scrolling through his contacts.

“Keep an eye out,” he says simply, drawing his sidearm. “It’s too quiet.”

“Too…?” Simmons lifts her eyes from his phone, brow furrowed—then realization dawns, and she takes another, warier look around them. “No birds.”

“Or bugs or friendly woodland creatures,” he nods, checking his gun. Fully loaded; good. “Been in a lot of forests in my life; silence is a bad sign.”

“Quite,” she agrees, and returns her attention to the phone. She’s looking a little scared now, which he doesn’t love, but she’s always been good in a crisis—and this isn’t one, at least not yet. She’ll be fine.

He keeps half an eye on her as he paces the perimeter of the clearing they’re in. Coulson must pick up on the first or second ring, because it’s not long at all before she’s perking up and talking a mile a minute.

That’s good. The fact that she rubs absently at her throat while she does the talking…

He rolls his shoulders, but it does nothing to ease the tension in them, or the tight, hot _something_ in his chest. He thinks it might actually be guilt, which is a new one on him.

He doesn’t like it—and he likes the still-reddening skin on Simmons’ neck and wrist even less.

But this isn’t the time for that, so he puts it aside again and focuses on their surroundings, letting her voice wash over him in a soothing stream of background noise.

They’re closed in by a variety of trees and bushes and shrubs—he’s sure Simmons, if he cared to ask, could name them all, but his knowledge of plants pretty much divides them into _poisonous_ and _not poisonous_ , and all he cares about is the fact that all of these fall into _not_.

Well, actually, he also cares about the fact that none of them show any signs of damage. All of the various vegetation is packed tight; it wouldn’t be easy to make it into this clearing without disturbing so much as a branch, but apparently they—or whoever left them here—managed it just fine.

Simmons is still talking, but he can tell by the weird, staccato rhythm and ten-syllable words that she’s been handed off to Fitz.

He takes a speculative glance at the sky. There’s a pretty big break in the canopy above them—but no. That’s pretty far-fetched.

He sighs to himself, resigned to the fact that this is most likely gonna turn out to be yet _another_ instance of weird alien crap screwing them over, and gives Simmons a little more of his attention as her voice rises.

“But that would mean—” She stops, scowling, as Fitz interrupts her—Grant can hear him squawking from clear across the clearing. “Oh, bloody hell.”

He raises his eyebrows at her, surprised. That’s not a phrase he hears from her very often—for one thing, it’s more of a Fitz phrase, and for another, she says Skye has, quote, _far_ too much fun with it, so she sticks to less British (or at least less Harry Potter) swearing.

His raised eyebrows get something between a grimace and a pout in return, and he sighs again, heavier. Yeah, it’s definitely alien crap, and her face tells him it’s about to get worse.

“All right,” Simmons says. “Yes, fine. We’ll look and call back if we don’t find it.” She rolls her eyes. “Don’t _fuss_ , Fitz; Ward is with me. I’ll be fine.”

The guilt returns, but it’s gotta compete against amusement and affection, and it just can’t win out. He never thought, when his _smart mouth_ and _tendency toward excessive use of force_ landed him on Coulson’s team, that he’d end up with a whole crew of non-combatants that not only expect but _trust_ him to protect them—that actually take it for granted he will.

Even nearly a year (and the collapse of their whole organization) later, it still makes him smile to remember Skye, Simmons, and Fitz’s collective offense at the surprise one of his fellow specialists expressed when they crossed paths in the field and Grant took the time out of a mission to a) criticize Skye’s form, b) let Simmons fuss over one of his injuries, and c) shut him down for insulting Fitz.

It was a long day, but Lorenzo definitely regretted that flippant _Don’t tell me you actually_ care _, Ward_ by the end of it.

“So?” Grant asks, brushing off the memory, as Simmons hangs up.

She sighs. “I suppose you want the short version?”

“It’d be nice.”

“To make a very long story very simple,” she says, “We were teleported here—we’re in northern Washington, by the way—by an 0-8-4.”

“Of course we were,” he says. The forest isn’t so quiet around them anymore—there’s birdsong starting up, the ruffle of branches and leaves—so he risks holstering his gun. “And I’m guessing it’s not gonna be as simple as May swinging by in the Quinjet to pick us up?”

“You guess correctly,” she says, miserably. She joins him at the edge of the clearing, hands over his phone, and gazes at the trees around them. “The 0-8-4 was, to simplify, somehow fractured in the act of teleporting us. According to Fitz, only half of it is present in that warehouse—they’ve searched it top to bottom, and there’s no sign of the other half.”

“Which means it’s probably somewhere here,” Grant surmises, and takes another look at the trees, himself. “And we have to find it before we can leave.”

“Worse than that, I’m afraid,” she says. “It—or at least the half still in New York, and as I’m lacking any equipment of my own, we’re simply going to have to assume the same is true of the half here—was horribly destabilized by the separation. And it’s very sensitive to changes in altitude.”

Grant pauses, considering that.

“Let me guess,” he says, with an unfortunate sinking feeling. “Too sensitive to fly it anywhere.”

“Once again, you’re correct.” Simmons offers an apologetic shrug. “When we find the 0-8-4— _if_ we find it—it will have to be driven to the Playground. And, as SHIELD is sadly lacking in containment teams these days…”

“Road trip?” he asks.

She nods. “Road trip.”

“Great.” He lets out a slow breath. “Northern Washington, you said?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ve got drop boxes in Seattle and Spokane, and enough funds on the cards in my wallet to get us to either of them, easy. But getting the 0-8-4 and getting out of this forest are our first steps, and they’re not gonna be fun.”

“No,” Simmons says, shoulders drooping. “I didn’t think so.”

She looks so _sad_ —and with the immediate _what the fuck is going on_ question answered, it’s a lot harder to fight off the guilt still making his chest tight. It’s not an emotion he’s used to struggling with; he’s killed, tortured, and totally broken people and been less moved by it than this.

He wants her to smile.

“How’s your throat?” he asks.

She straightens. “Oh, it’s—”

“Honest answer,” he warns.

“It’s _fine_ ,” she insists. “A touch sore, perhaps, but nothing I can’t handle.”

He searches her face for a second, but the words ring true. A little bit of the guilt goes away.

“And your wrist?”

She looks down at it, and he winces as he follows suit. It’s not just bruising, it’s _swelling_. He might’ve sprained something, there.

Fuck.

“It’s not your fault,” she assures him hurriedly. “I _know_ better than to try and wake you by shaking your shoulder, for goodness’ sake, I don’t know what I was—”

He catches her wrist— _gently_ —as she moves to hide it behind her back, and she goes quiet.

“I don’t say this often,” he says, inspecting the damage, “So trust me when I say I’m being honest here: this was _absolutely_ my fault, and I’m really sorry.”

She smiles—a tiny, half-hearted thing, but it still makes him feel a little better.

“Now that you mention it,” she says, “I’ve never heard you claim responsibility for anything before.”

“Specialist Strategy 101,” he says. “Deny, deny, deny.”

Her smile widens for a second, then falters as he brushes the fingers of his free hand—very, _very_ gently—over her wrist. He clocks the uptick in her pulse, catches the stutter in her breathing, and thinks maybe this is the moment.

He’s wanted to make a move on Simmons for a while now. He gave her time to sort things out with Fitz—to recover from the awkward tension her best friend’s post-HYDRA fallout love confession created—and to adjust to the new way of things, and for the last few weeks he’s just been biding his time, waiting for the right moment.

Maybe this—having just (however inadvertently) injured her, stuck in the middle of nowhere, facing down a cross-country drive with an unstable alien artifact—wouldn’t seem like it to most people, but…

They’re about to spend several days, at the least, by themselves. No Fitz or Skye or anyone else to interrupt, no one to poke at them and interrogate them while they figure things out. This is probably the most privacy they’ll ever get.

He doesn’t want to waste it.

“I’m really sorry,” he repeats, and—watching her carefully—lifts her wrist to drop a soft kiss to the worst of the bruising.

Simmons swallows, cheeks going a little red. “If you insist on taking the blame…”

“I do.”

“Then you’re forgiven,” she says.

He kisses her wrist again, holding back a smile as her blush darkens. “Thank you.”

“Are you attempting to kiss it better?” she asks, a little tartly. “That’s hardly standard medical procedure.”

“Yeah, but it’s worth a shot, right?” He lets his smile show through. “And it’s not like we’ve got anything in the way of first-aid supplies, so…”

The look she gives him under her lashes is enough to have him fighting back the urge to tug her into his arms for a _real_ kiss—and he’s not, to be honest, fighting very hard.

“Is that the only reason?” she asks.

It’s a breathy kind of question, and he does a quick read of the signals she’s giving off: standing closer than necessary, angled towards him, chin tilted up, lips slightly parted.

Receptive, he decides. _Very_ receptive.

“No,” he says, bluntly. He wraps his other arm around her waist and tugs her up against him, releasing her wrist—he doesn’t want to squeeze it too hard by accident—in favor of sliding his hand into her hair. “It also makes for a pretty good segue.”

She smiles, slow and flirtatious. “Into what?”

He pauses for half a heartbeat, just to double-check their surroundings. No sign of any threats. The forest’s returned to what he assumes is its usual level of noise—it sure sounds like every other forest he’s ever been in, at least.

They need to get to finding the 0-8-4 and then get the hell out of here.

But a few minutes won’t hurt, right?

“This,” he says, and kisses her.


End file.
